Thursday, December 12, 2013

SILENT NIGHT, HOLY NIGHT

T

he first story I can remember hearing as a child was
Dickens’ Christmas Carol .It was my sister, Mary Lou, who read it to
me.This wasn’t a Christmas tradition,
she read it to me all year round, over and over, from the time I was still in
diapers.

A Christmas Carol
was also one of the first books that I read from cover to cover, other than
school assignments.Mary Lou was 15
years older than me.Her signal that it
was story time was to begin playing the piano, a talent I never shared.If the story was to be the book I called
“Scrooge”, the song would always be Silent
Night.

Since I was not yet in kindergarten, the story required a
great deal of explanation.I can
remember the scene when Scrooge gets home and sees Marley’s face in the
doorknocker.“He died seven years ago, this very night.” At this point in the story, my sister would
look at me and always say, “Wouldn’t it be sad to die on Christmas Eve?”A few more bars of Silent Night would flow
from the upright piano.“All is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin
mother and child,”

The Dickens classic clearly influenced my own writing.It taught me that a tale of the paranormal
could be used to teach a moral lesson.From its beginning, the genre we call “horror” has done this.Mary Shelly clearly wrote of her concern
about unchecked “enlightened” rationalism when she penned Frankenstein.Without that
deeper meaning, stories that are just scary for the sake of scary always seem
flat to me.Give me literature I can
peel back and discover depth and layers of nuance.

“Holy infant so tender
and mild.”A little Hummel figurine
of the Christ Child had been placed in the crèche on our fireplace mantel and I
was busy mixing eggnog when the phone rang on December 24, 1998.Mary Lou would not be coming over to my house
as planned.She had been found dead in
her apartment, it was a stroke, sudden and lethal.Somehow, I could hear her voice, once more
asking me, “wouldn’t it be sad to die on Christmas Eve?”

Sleep in heavenly
peace, Sleep in heavenly peace.

T.R. Heinan is author
of L’immortalite: Madame Lalaurie and the Voodoo Queen.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

JUST A BITE OF CANDY ON
HALLOWEEN

By T.R. Heinan

originally published on Thewriteroomblog.com

T

om Thibodaux was the first uniformed officer on the scene.
Until he saw the body, he thought the call would turn out to be another
Halloween prank. That’s what he told Homicide Detective Bart Pellerin. The two
cops stared down at the bloody corpse as the crime scene crew finished taking
photographs. Every cop present was asking the same question.“What happened to the rest of her face?”

After returning to the station, Pellerin played back the
tape.A “demon” killed a girl on
Governor Nicholls Street next to the Lalaurie Mansion. At least that’s what all
five callers told the 911 operator. None of the callers had actually seen this
“demon”, but that’s what the only eye witness kept screaming. The flurry of
cell phone calls weren’t going to be much help.

Even with half her face missing, it didn’t take long to get
an initial identification of the victim.Her name was Candice Boggs, a student at Tulane.According to her boyfriend, Candy had become obsessed
with a new television series about Delphine Lalaurie. She wanted to take a
haunted walking tour on Halloween night to see the building people in New
Orleans call THE haunted house.

The only person who would admit to witnessing Candy’s death
was a drunk who called himself Pauley. Pellerin would know his true identity in
a few minutes, after his prints were scanned.Pauley was beyond intoxicated, so Officer Thibodaux was keeping an eye
on him in Interrogation Room #3.

Pellerin watched boyfriend Steve Iverson in Room #2. The
young man was nervous and his mood appeared to shift from confusion to anger to
extreme grief and back to confusion in the span of less than two minutes.

“Candy took a photo
when our tour group was standing on Governor Nicholls Street.It showed an orb in front of the Lalaurie Mansion,”
said Steve.

“An orb?”

“A ball of light in
the photo,” Steve tried to explain.“Sort of a big deal for people into ghost hunting.”

“And Candice was
into ghost hunting?”

“She loved all that
paranormal stuff.Can you take these
cuffs off me?”

“Maybe in a few
minutes.Why is it that you didn’t see
what happened?”

“Our tour group had
rounded the corner onto Royal Street so the guide could explain the front door
of the mansion.It has all these odd
carvings. Candy, ran back to see if she could get one more orb picture.”

“So she went back
to Governor Nichols Street and the rest of you were on Royal, is that right?”

“For a few minutes,
yes.”

“Then what?” asked
Pellerin.

“This drunk guy
came around the corner screaming at us.”

Pellerin was about to follow up with another question when a
knock signaled that Officer Thibodaux was outside the door.Pellerin walked out to the hallway to see
what the uniformed cops had learned.

“Our witness is
Paul Jefferson,” Thibodaux said in a low voice.“Been in and out of every rehab in New Orleans.He’s useless. Delusional. The tour guide thinks
the girl left the rest of the group and disappeared around the corner. The
ticket agent for the tours doesn’t even remember her.”

“Boyfriend probably
bought the tickets,” said Pellerin.“So,
tell me about this demon.”

“Pauley says he was
having a drink on the sidewalk when a ball of light appeared over the Lalaurie
house.Says the girl came around the
corner with a camera, from then on it just gets weird.”

“Weird, how?” Pellerin
asked.

“He says the light
grew in size, turned into a fourteen foot tall female with bat wings, bit the woman
on the face and then vanished into thin air. I’m gonna ask him for a blood
sample.See what else he’s on besides
booze.”

Pellerin scratched his head and asked, “So what do you think
happened?”

“Boyfriend did it,”
said Thibodaux.“It’s always the
boyfriend.”

“The tour guide
says he was with the group.”

“The guide thinks he saw him, but none of the rest
of the group remembers whether he went with her or not.All they recall is Pauley running around the
corner screaming about a demon.”

“Maybe”, said Pellerin,
“but her face looked like it was bitten by a shark.How long did it take for you to respond to
the call?”

“Less than two
minutes”, answered Thibodaux.

“So where is the
rest of her face?” We talking about an eye, and a chunk of flesh, bone and brain
larger than my fist!”

“We’ve searched
everywhere, not a trace”, said Thibodaux. “I don’t know how, but that kid did
it.”

“Detective,” the
desk sergeant called out.“You better hear
this.Caller says a creature from hell
is attacking a taxi driver in front of the Lalaurie Mansion.”

T.R. Heinan is the author
of L’immortalité: Madame Lalaurie and the Voodoo Queen

Monday, September 30, 2013

WIN A FREE SIGNED COPY You may know the cover characters, Delphine Lalaurie and Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau,from having taken a haunted tour in New Orleans, visiting the Conti Wax Museum, or watching American Horror Story on TV. Now you can discover the entire history and the best of the urban legend in this 5 star reviewed page-turner by T.R. Heinan. Here’s what readers are saying in Amazon reviews:“Descriptions of the different types of bigotry and racial history, such as the "Code Noir", are nothing short of amazing”, “I could not put this book down” “I was up all night reading” “The grizzly detail of the legend, the horrific acts, and the way T.R. Heinan described them sent chills up my spine” “The history is right on and he really brought the characters to life for his readers”

This is a
fictional story woven around the true history of Delphine Lalaurie whose desire
for immortality came true, as her name will always be linked to the history of
New Orleans. She beat and mistreated her slaves and sanctioned her husband's
gruesome experiments in the name of science. Their antebellum mansion in the
French Quarter has been preserved and today is said to be one of the most
haunted houses in New Orleans, where the cries of the tortured and dismembered
slaves can still be heard.The story revolves around Phillipe Bertrand, the
Saint Louis Cathedral's lay sacristan and the kindly Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau,
and their combined efforts to save a slave child and end the torture to the
other slaves in the mansion.The book is filled with hidden innuendo.
Bertrand lives in a yellow brick house where today a yellow brick building
actually exists, on Pirate's Alley, which becomes a metaphorical brick road for
him. He gives the runaway slave girl Elise bread, and later pours her
wine.Marie Laveau practices voodoo but is also a regular member of the
Catholic Church, and in reality, New Orleans is probably the only place in the
world where the two come together today.The story moves at a fast pace and
is hard to put down.The characters from the book are soon to be used by the
hit TV series American Horror Story.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

IS IT TRUE?

Is this a true
story?That’s the question I’m asked
most often when people begin to read L’immortalité: Madame Lalaurie and the
Voodoo Queen.

My account is fictionalized,
in order to bring readers the very best of the history and the legend of
Delphine Lalaurie and her “haunted” mansion in New Orleans.Philippe Bertand, my protagonist in the
story, is a fictional character.Most of
the rest of the “cast” are carefully researched presentations of real people who
actually knew Madame Delphine.

When, on April 10,
1834, an old slave named Arnante set fire to the Lalaurie Mansion (and to
herself), the horrors of 1140 Royal Street were revealed to the public for the
very first time.Here is a contemporary
newspaper account from the New Orleans
Bee published the day after the fire.

Several slaves more or less horribly mutilated, were seen
suspended from the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from
one extremity to the other. Language is powerless and inadequate to give a
proper recollection of the horror which a scene like this must have inspired.
We shall not attempt it, but leave it rather to the reader's imagination to
picture what it was!

The slaves were
the property of the demon in the shape of a woman whom we mentioned in the
beginning of this article. They had been confined by her for several months in
the situation from which they had thus been rescued and had merely been kept in
existence to prolong their sufferings and to make them taste all that the most
refined cruelty could inflict. But why dwell upon the particulars! We feel
confident that the community share with us our indignation, and that vengeance
will fall, heavily full upon the guilty culprit. Without being superstitious,
we cannot but regard the manner in which these atrocities have been brought to
light as an especial interposition of heaven.

I decided to use
the last line of this account in my book (page 106).Whether the exposure of Delphine Lalaurie’s
treatment of her slaves was divine intervention, or not, the event quickly
became a key moment in the history of American horror.

The story of Delphine
Lalaurie has been popular since George Washington Cable published it in the 19th
Century.Lalaurie appears on Barbara
Hambly’s excellent novel Fever Season,
and most recently, Carolyn Morrow Long produced Madame Lalaurie:Mistress of the
Haunted House, an outstanding non-fiction text that carefully details the
history.Another short history was
published in 2011 by Victoria Cosner Lave and Lorelei Shannon.You will find a brief synopsis of the story
in the (low budget) film, The St.
Francisville Experiment.On television,the Lalaurie Mansion has been featured
on Haunted History and beginning in October, Kathy Bates will portray Delphine Lalaurie on
the FX series, American Horror Story.

So, yes, Virginia,
there really was a Delphine Lalaurie and she still haunts the old mansion in
the French Quarter of New Orleans.Read her
legend in L’immortalité on Kindle or in trade paperback.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

TUCSON, Ariz. – In “L’immortalité:Madame Lalaurie and the Voodoo Queen” (ISBN
978-1-63003-914-1), author T.R. Heinan shows the lengths people will go in the
quest for immortality.The 5 star
reviewed historical fiction novel combines horror, history and humor to tell
the story of New Orleans “most haunted” house.

Set in the 1830’s Creole community of New Orleans,
“L’immortalite” takes readers on a journey with Philippe Bertrand, a reclusive
lay sacristan who lacks compassion for others after the death of his wife and
mother.He is led to a mansion owned by
Madame Delphine Lalaurie, and there, he meets a young slave named Elise.The events that follow result in the slave’s
escape, the discovery of macabre medical experiments in the mansion’s attic,
and the intervention of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau.

The paperback format of this book has been recommended by
top-rated haunted tours in New Orleans and was shown at the 2013 HWA-Bram
Stoker Awards weekend.The growing
popularity of book’s title characters bring thousands of New Orleans visitors
each year to view “haunted” Lalaurie Mansion and the tomb of Marie Laveau.

Heinan hope readers will gain a deeper understanding of New
Orleans history while enjoying the ride he takes them on through Philippe’s
meditative quest for eternal life. The book is illustrated by Hollywood artist
John Weston.

“L’immortalite:Madame Lalaurie and the Voodoo Queen” is now available in Kindle format
and is free to Kindle Prime users Amazon.

About the Author:

T. R. Heinan is a Minnesota native, born and raised in
Duluth.He attended Marquette University
and worked as a journalist before beginning a career in investment banking
specializing in the motion picture and airline industries. After retiring,
Heinan has spent his time writing and serving orphaned and homeless children at
a Mexican orphanage he helped to build.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

New Orleans Literary
Tour

There is something about New Orleans, especially the French
Quarter, that just makes you want to read…and write. Maybe it’s the history, the music or the
haunted buildings. Maybe it’s the
legacy of Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Anne Rice. Whatever it is, you’re sure to
feel it moving in your soul when you walk the humid, colorful streets with names like Conti, Burgundy
(emphasis on “gun”) and Bourbon.
Whenever I get to NOLA, I just want to rip my shirt open, scream,
“Stella!!!” and pick up a book…or a pen.

I just returned from the Horror Writers Convention/Bram
Stoker Awards at NOLA’s Hotel Monteleone.
What could be more fun than selling a book about Royal Street than
actually doing it on Royal Street? Even
better than signing books, were my slow walks around the Quarter that revealed one deposit of great books after another.
Here are a few favorites.

You can take a great literary tour of NOLA by calling Ms.Inez and asking for a Heritage Literary Tour. The number is 504-451-1082

Monday, June 10, 2013

WHEN IN NOLA, TAKE A HAUNTED TOUR

Few things are as much fun as a “haunted tour” in America’s
most haunted city, New Orleans. A quick
check with TripAdvisor will show you that the largest, and sometimes most
visible, ghost tours aren’t always the best.
For master story tellers, an easy pace, careful research and just plain
fun, it’s hard to beat French Quarter
Phantoms walking tours. They offer a
variety of tours and most begin at Flanagan’s Pub, 625 St Philip Street in the
French Quarter.

Strange True Tours
is another favorite, with great cemetery tours and a new bicycle tour.

I’ll be returning to French Quarter Phantoms on Father’s Day,
June 16, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. to sign books and I plan to take more tours with
both companies while visiting New Orleans.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

L'immortalite: Madame Lalaurie and the Voodoo Queen to haunt New Orleans' Hotel Monteleone Next Month

The Hotel Monteleone
is known for its ghosts and its writers, so it is hardly surprising that this hotel
was pickedfor the 2013 Horror Writers Convention, which, this year, is also
incorporating the World Horror
Convention. TheHWA/WHC weekend runs
June 13-16, culminating with the gala presentation of the 26th
annual Bram Stoker Awards.

The Hotel Monteleone is designated as an official literary
landmark by the Friends of the Library Association. Writers who often stayed at
the hotel include Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, and Ernest
Hemmingway.John Grisham, Stephan Ambrose,
Eudora Welty, Anne Rice and numerous other popular authors have also been
guests.Truman Capote once claimed (jokingly)
to have been born there.

According to the International Society of Paranormal
Research, at least a dozen ghosts haunt the Monteleone, the best known of which
is a child ghost who has been lingering in the hotel for over a century.Just a mile down Royal Street from the haunted
Lalaurie Mansion, Hotel Monteleone
is the ideal setting for a meeting of horror writers, and I will be there daily
at Table #5 (Nonius LLC Press) in the dealers room (La Nouvelle Orleans West). Stop by and say
hello.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Visit Author T. R. Heinan at Booth #158 at the Tucson Festival of Books, Saturday, March 9 & Sunday March 10, for your signed copy of L'immortalite: Madame Lalaurie and the Voodoo Queen http://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org

Friday, February 8, 2013

From The Arizona Daily Star 01-06-13

"L'Immortalite: Madame LaLaurie and the Voodoo Queen"
By T.R. Heinan (Nonius LLC, $14.99)
The principal activity of this exercise in horror takes places in New Orleans in the mid-1830s. Dr. LaLaurie researches Galvanism in his home laboratory using slaves as guinea pigs. (The best known acolyte of Galvanism is Dr. Frankenstein.) His wife, Delphine, wants only to become immortal. Marie Laveau, a practitioner in the black arts, achieves this in a spectacular if unexpected way.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

New York writer Micki Peluso, author of And the Whipporwill Sang, gives L'Immortalite: Madame Lalaurie and the Voodoo Queen5 stars and calls the descriptions of New Orleans racial history "nothing less than amazing". http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615634710

A psychologist, author, philosopher, freelance editor,
and skeptic, Dan O’Brien has published several novels and currently has many in
print, including: The End of the World Playlist, Bitten, The
Journey, The Ocean and the Hourglass, The Portent, The
Path of the Fallen, Book of Seth, and Cerulean Dreams. Follow him on
Twitter (@AuthorDanOBrien) or visit his blog at http://thedanobrienproject.blogspot.com. He also works as an
editor at Empirical, a national magazine with a strong West Coast vibe.
Find out more about the magazine at www.empiricalmagazine.com.

Micki Peluso began writing
as a catharsis for grief over the loss of her teenage daughter to a DWI
vehicular homicide. This led to a career as a journalist--staff writer at one
award-winning newspaper and slice of life humorist at her daily newspaper. She
has published short stories and articles, and won contests and awards in
various print magazines, newspapers and e-zines.She reviews books for two noted
book review on-line sites and freelances book reviews. Micki is currently
compiling a collection of her work in a book called "Heartbeats . .
.Slices of Life", to be released in late 2013.

Linda Hales is a writer, committed to publishing
storybooks with a moral for children up to the age of 7. She currently has two
books on her roster, one for each of two new series, 'Sunshine' and 'Andy-Roo'.
In 2013, Linda plans to release two more titles and a coordinated series of
matching coloring books.

Stuart is a writer of fiction and marketing materials and has published 2
novellas of the Harry Patterson Adventures and will publish another in 2013.
His first near-fi novel will be published in Q1 of 2013.

Delinda is a social psychologist and author. Her first
career focussed on special needs populations. She is now using her many years
of experience to write novels touching on the human condition. While writing
about tough subjects Delinda sees the humor in life and tries to give her
stories an element of light. Currently she has three books available "Lies
That Bind", "M'TK Sewer Rat: End of an Empire" and "M'TK
Sewer Rat: Birth of a Nation." Her novel "Something About Maudy"
is due out in the spring of 2013 with "Taking Gramma Home" to follow
in the early summer.

An Argentinean Literature teacher and psychoanalyst, Marta
Merajver-Kurlat has published fiction in Spanish, been translated into English
and Korean, and written most of her non-fiction in English. She is currently
working on a novel in English under the provisional title of The Men in My
Life, to be released soon by Jorge Pinto Books Inc., New York, NY, and
starting a project that reflects her studies of Greek myth.

Category:Multiple
Clayton Bye is a writer, editor and publisher. The author of 9 books and a
varied collection of short stories, poems, articles and hundreds of reviews, he
is in the process of releasing his second anthology of short stories by
talented authors from around the world.

Cherrye S. Vasquez is a public school administrator and an adjunct
professor. She specializes in Multi-cultural education and holds certifications
in Early Childhood Handicapped, Mid-Management and Educational Diagnostician.
She loves children and believes that they should love self-first, and affirm
their belief in who they are and what they aspire to become in life. Cherrye’s
platform topics center on diversity and bullying issues, and topics of
relevance which draws effective discourse and dialogue around her platform. She
has published e-zines, two journal books titled: Diversity Daybook: Journal,
and Affirmation Daybook: Journal. Cherrye also worked alongside her
daughter Kelly, as they created a little girl’s diary titled, Guess What?
Dear Diary, Cherrye is the author and her daughter is the illustrator.
Cherrye's second children’s chapter book, Dedicated Identity, will be
released summer 2013

R.L. Cherry- Author, columnist, raconteur

R.L. Cherry has been writing an oft-humorous column on hot rods and classic
cars for The Union newspaper of Grass Valley, CA for over seven years.His first book, Christmas Cracker, was
published in July of 2012.It is a
murder mystery, set in England, with a wise-cracking female detective from
Southern California solving the case.His suspense novel, Foul Shot, about a Chicago Police detective who
becomes involved with a wild, troubled woman who changes his life, is to be
released early in 2013.Three Legs of
the Cauldron, a sago set in early medieval Scotland, is undergoing editing and
scheduled for later in 2013.